Prologue

(Merry Christmas! Just a quick stage-setting post today that will launch into what became quite the recipe exploration over the weekend.)

I heard this little story a few years back, and it resonated with me:

A newlywed bride was preparing a roast for her husband. As they chatted in the kitchen he watched her measure ingredients, chop veggies, and prepare the roast. Before setting everything in the roasting pan she took a knife, and chopped about two inches of roast off of one end.

“What does that do for the recipe?” inquired the husband.

“I don’t know; my mom’s always done it,” replied the bride.

A few months later, while at a dinner at his in-laws, the husband found a chance to ask his mother-in-law about the roast preparation, and posed the same question about the trimming of the beef roast. Her reply, “I’m not sure, but that’s how my mother’s always done it.”

Now the holidays have rolled around, and at a large family gathering this curious husband finds his wife’s grandmother and asks the same question: “why do you trim a couple of inches off the end of the roast?”

She smiled a little, leaned in towards her granddaughter’s husband and said: “my roasting pan was too small for the cut I got at the butcher’s so I had to trim some off.”